HELP! What is causing this HORRIBLE performance?

[chmania]

I don't get it, which is the offending app in Activity Monitor that is causing this?
Macbook M3Max 128GB with updated Sonoma connected to an external 1080p widescreen monitor

If you have any 3rd party apps in System Settings > Login Items, disable them and delete them. Then shut down your Mac, wait a while and reboot it. That way, you'd get rid of those 3rd party apps running in the background. Even with 128GB memory, you might get a hard time with those apps. Especially those, "we'll-clean-your-mac" type apps. Also, that would get rid of Google, Adobe or MS etc continuous automatic background syncing, their helpers' background syncing.

Actually, if you have any "we'll-clean-your-mac" type apps, VPNs, antivirus apps, or any such fear mongering apps, uninstall them. They are usually the culprits of slowing down the Mac.

 

[dummydecoy]

Are these screenshots taken when a slowdown is occurring?

Yes! Crazy right?

If you have any 3rd party apps in System Settings > Login Items, disable them and delete them. Then shut down your Mac, wait a while and reboot it. That way, you'd get rid of those 3rd party apps running in the background. Even with 128GB memory, you might get a hard time with those apps. Especially those, "we'll-clean-your-mac" type apps. Also, that would get rid of Google, Adobe or MS etc continuous automatic background syncing, their helpers' background syncing.

Actually, if you have any "we'll-clean-your-mac" type apps, VPNs, antivirus apps, or any such fear mongering apps, uninstall them. They are usually the culprits of slowing down the Mac.

Thank you, I appreciate your reply. I'll take note of this. I don't have any cleaner apps installed, but I have an ExpressVPN subscription with their app installed. I have Knockknock, but that doesn't run in the background at all. Even Adobe's on login app is disabled. I will nuke ExpressVPN if the slowdown occurs again. So far, the issue hasnt occured since Sunday. The last thing I did was reinstall MacOs. If the issue doesnt happen again in two weeks I will consider this issue solved and update this thread one last time.

 

[casperes1996]

Thank you, I appreciate your reply. I'll take note of this. I don't have any cleaner apps installed, but I have an ExpressVPN subscription with their app installed. I have Knockknock, but that doesn't run in the background at all. Even Adobe's on login app is disabled. I will nuke ExpressVPN if the slowdown occurs again. So far, the issue hasnt occured since Sunday. The last thing I did was reinstall MacOs. If the issue doesnt happen again in two weeks I will consider this issue solved and update this thread one last time.

Hope for you it's solved. Certainly not a good experience with such a powerful machine. Even my lowly M1 Pro with 16GB of RAM that I use at work runs a lot better than this with VSCode, Zed, Android Studio, Xcode, 3 iOS Simulators, one Android emulator, Safari with several Jira and Figma pages open, Music, Messenger, Teams, Mail, iTerm, Discord and occasionally YouTube - The hardware definitely isn't the issue (in terms of power - can't speak to potential defects, but if it remains fixed, most likely borked software)

 

[MacCheetah3]

Hope for you it's solved. Certainly not a good experience with such a powerful machine. Even my lowly M1 Pro with 16GB of RAM that I use at work runs a lot better than this with VSCode, Zed, Android Studio, Xcode, 3 iOS Simulators, one Android emulator, Safari with several Jira and Figma pages open, Music, Messenger, Teams, Mail, iTerm, Discord and occasionally YouTube - The hardware definitely isn't the issue (in terms of power - can't speak to potential defects, but if it remains fixed, most likely borked software)

The ongoing struggle of optimal thread/process/task management.

Adopting Swift concurrency | Apple Developer Documentation

Swift supports asynchronous functions that enable you to more easily write responsive and correct asynchronous code. In this article, you’ll learn how to define and call asynchronous functions, and explore how Swift concurrency simplifies complex asynchronous operations.

developer.apple.com

For example:

Why are notifications not removed with removeDeliveredNotifications?

Up until recently (I believe prior to iOS 12 release), removing remote push notifications from the Notification Center worked as expected using removeDeliveredNotifications. Suddenly, without any ...

stackoverflow.com

Related:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/how-do-you-all-think-apple-should-fix-notifications.2425052/post-33107583

 

[casperes1996]

The ongoing struggle of optimal thread/process/task management.

Adopting Swift concurrency | Apple Developer Documentation

Swift supports asynchronous functions that enable you to more easily write responsive and correct asynchronous code. In this article, you’ll learn how to define and call asynchronous functions, and explore how Swift concurrency simplifies complex asynchronous operations.

developer.apple.com

For example:

Why are notifications not removed with removeDeliveredNotifications?

Up until recently (I believe prior to iOS 12 release), removing remote push notifications from the Notification Center worked as expected using removeDeliveredNotifications. Suddenly, without any ...

stackoverflow.com

Related:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/how-do-you-all-think-apple-should-fix-notifications.2425052/post-33107583

This all seems weirdly unrelated to anything in this thread. The OP’s stutter has nothing to do with thread management in sure of it. Unless a thread bomb is firing but that’d be visible in cpu usage.

And I write grand central dispatch based code every day. In my opinion, while swift concurrency can be easier to reason about in some settings, all concurrency has pitfalls and it doesn’t matter if you use GCD or structured concurrency, all of it can lead to tricky bugs.

And that thread about people dissatisfied with the UX of notifications; how does that relate to managing threads?

 

[T'hain Esh Kelch]

Yes! Crazy right?

Sure is puzzling! In that case my only argument is that it has to be a specific application which is doing certain system calls, which aren't acting as they should. So you'd have to run periods with specific apps not running, and see what is still running when you problem happens.

Personally I'd format the machine, install the barest necessary apps, and then run that for a while and see if things go haywire.

 

[MacCheetah3]

@casperes1996 In general, my point was about how resource sharing doesn’t always play out as you intend/expect, or as you say:

all concurrency has pitfalls and it doesn’t matter if you use GCD or structured concurrency, all of it can lead to tricky bugs.

that’d be visible in cpu usage

But resource contention isn’t always correlated with a CPU usage spike. Two examples come to mind…

(There is a discussion thread on the following but I can’t find it at the moment.) If you had the MR forum loaded in a tab then switched away, upon return the page would only be partially loaded, the mouse cursor would stutter/lag, and no amount of refreshing would return things to normal. Instead, the performance hit would only cease if you closed the tab, killing all the related processes. No substantial change in CPU usage. By the way, MR hasn’t crippled my Mac in a few weeks at least, but that’s probably because it appears Safari is doing better at blocking their ad serving — there are just blank spaces. And, no, I don’t use a third-party ad-blocker.

Bluetooth… And I don’t mean some kind of radio interference to the mouse/trackpad/keyboard. In my case, some cheap BT earbuds that struggled to (stay) connect(ed) would/will cripple (i.e., cause stutter/lag) the entire OS GUI until the connection attempt timed out or I canceled/stopped it. Again, no noticeable change in overall processor usage. Basically, it appeared WindowServer was frequently, constantly waiting for what would seem like an unrelated task that presumably could be able to be entirely handled by another processing core. But, of course, it’s not that simple as I assume you know.

Anyway… I guess, I’ll just leave it at that.

 

[casperes1996]

But resource contention isn’t always correlated with a CPU usage spike. Two examples come to mind…

The quote you respond to with this, was me saying it would be visible if there was a thread bomb; As that would consume one core 100% to create more threads constantly; That would be visible specifically.

You can absolutely have situations where usage is low but things keep waiting on each other and acting slowly.

 

[dummydecoy]

Sigh. It's back. I thought that MacOS reinstall I performed last weekend fixed it, but it just started lagging hard 5 mins ago, I was just doing basic Google sheets work for that past 4 hours. I noticed it started lagging once Windowserver hit 4000 ports. Took this screenshot while the issue is occuring and it's up to 6000+ ports already and rising. What does having a lot of ports mean in Windowserver? I guess a full reformat and reinstall is what I need to do, right?

Launchd on the Disk tab has written 8+GB as well, could it be launchd?

 

[casperes1996]

Sigh. It's back. I thought that MacOS reinstall I performed last weekend fixed it, but it just started lagging hard 5 mins ago, I was just doing basic Google sheets work for that past 4 hours. I noticed it started lagging once Windowserver hit 4000 ports. Took this screenshot while the issue is occuring and it's up to 6000+ ports already and rising. What does having a lot of ports mean in Windowserver? I guess a full reformat and reinstall is what I need to do, right?

Launchd on the Disk tab has written 8+GB as well, could it be launchd?

Before performing a full reinstall try running an AHT

How to Test Your Mac’s Performance

Find out how to test Mac performance, with Apple Diagnostics to benchmark and tools to test your CPU, GPU, RAM, and disk speed.

www.avast.com

the ports are Mach ports which is how applications send and receive messages outside of their process space. They are not the same as tcp or udp ports in general networking. They are lighter weight and it’s common to have a lot. That said if you see a correlation between ports and slowdowns it’s possible the cause is a lot of communication dependency drains to window server somehow. Though that doesn’t explain why.

 

[dummydecoy]

Before performing a full reinstall try running an AHT

How to Test Your Mac’s Performance

Find out how to test Mac performance, with Apple Diagnostics to benchmark and tools to test your CPU, GPU, RAM, and disk speed.

www.avast.com

the ports are Mach ports which is how applications send and receive messages outside of their process space. They are not the same as tcp or udp ports in general networking. They are lighter weight and it’s common to have a lot. That said if you see a correlation between ports and slowdowns it’s possible the cause is a lot of communication dependency drains to window server somehow. Though that doesn’t explain why.

Thank you for your reply! Do I run this while the issue is occuring? I have already rebooted the laptop because I needed to work. Once I get the report generated, do I post here? Curious, any chance you can tell me the highest number of ports you ever got for your copy of Windowserver?

 

[casperes1996]

Thank you for your reply! Do I run this while the issue is occuring? I have already rebooted the laptop because I needed to work. Once I get the report generated, do I post here? Curious, any chance you can tell me the highest number of ports you ever got for your copy of Windowserver?

You can’t. It doesn’t run from within macOS. It’s a special environment you boot into. Despite the title of the articl, it’s a diagnostic tool not performance testing. It was just the first resource I found to help you get into the AHT environment

as for open ports I can check tomorrow

 

[chmania]

Sigh. It's back. I thought that MacOS reinstall I performed last weekend fixed it, but it just started lagging hard 5 mins ago, I was just doing basic Google sheets work for that past 4 hours. I noticed it started lagging once Windowserver hit 4000 ports. Took this screenshot while the issue is occuring and it's up to 6000+ ports already and rising. What does having a lot of ports mean in Windowserver? I guess a full reformat and reinstall is what I need to do, right?

What if you disable Floorp and all its helpers, extensions? Also, Little Snitch, Gifski and Monarch...
If you really need those (and any other such apps) you can install them later, one by one to check. Most 3rd party apps act as they know the internals of macOS, but they don't. If the internals of macOS was freely known, there won't be any macOS as we know today.

 

[casperes1996]

What if you disable Floorp and all its helpers, extensions? Also, Little Snitch, Gifski and Monarch...
If you really need those (and any other such apps) you can install them later, one by one to check. Most 3rd party apps act as they know the internals of macOS, but they don't. If the internals of macOS was freely known, there won't be any macOS as we know today.

Pretty strange sentiment given that a lot of the core OS is open source (or source available depending on your definition of the term).

 

[chmania]

Pretty strange sentiment given that a lot of the core OS is open source (or source available depending on your definition of the term).

Some of it is open source, but what's counted is not, which makes it proprietary.
Anyway, look at the 3rd image here. And, others too.
The problem OP's having could be from the 3rd party apps, or by a hardware failure. So, best test out using the macOS, and adding those 3rd party app to it, one by one, to see, if that's a software problem. If not, he has to take the Mac to service.

 

[casperes1996]

Some of it is open source, but what's counted is not, which makes it proprietary.
Anyway, look at the 3rd image here. And, others too.
The problem OP's having could be from the 3rd party apps, or by a hardware failure. So, best test out using the macOS, and adding those 3rd party app to it, one by one, to see, if that's a software problem. If not, he has to take the Mac to service.

macOS as a whole is a proprietary OS, naturally. But core Darwin/XNU is source available and that's substantial part.

In any case, is your take that all third party software is malware or what?

I agree that adding in one by one, albeit incredibly time consuming, is a good debugging strategy. Although one could speed it up through a binary search. - Add in half the software you use, run with it for a while, see if it causes issues - if yes, narrow it down to half of that half and so forth - if not, start with half of the other half and so forth.

 

[casperes1996]

Thank you for your reply! Do I run this while the issue is occuring? I have already rebooted the laptop because I needed to work. Once I get the report generated, do I post here? Curious, any chance you can tell me the highest number of ports you ever got for your copy of Windowserver?

4,496 ports all running smoothly

 

[chmania]

In any case, is your take that all third party software is malware or what?

You use 3rd party software at your risk. Most times such problems are due to 3rd party software, rather than the OS. Anyone can be a problem at any given time. No guarantee on them by Apple/macOS.

I agree that adding in one by one, albeit incredibly time consuming, is a good debugging strategy. Although one could speed it up through a binary search. - Add in half the software you use, run with it for a while, see if it causes issues - if yes, narrow it down to half of that half and so forth - if not, start with half of the other half and so forth.

Most people have a whole lot of 3rd party software, either to try them out, or by getting caught of the advertising, and some are absolutely needed for work. All of them (or the majority) running at same time might bring in trouble, even if you have a massive amount of RAM. Most probably, it is the processor that's getting hit. So, the best way is to check the 3rd party software out. Sure, it is a slow process, but that machine is quite expensive, so some time has to be put in. Otherwise, it'd had to be taken to service.

 

[FRworld]

Hello! In the screenshots, I see a third party software that has root privileges (jump connect) which I think is a very bad sign. After a quick search on google (""jumpconnect" Mac malware", I found various pages mentioning slowdowns with this software installed.
You should make a clean re-install of your Mac and avoid at any cost apps requiring your password for installation. They usually place tons of crap in your system.

 

[benwiggy]

I thought that MacOS reinstall I performed last weekend fixed it, but it just started lagging hard 5 mins ago, I was just doing basic Google sheets work for that past 4 hours.

Firstly, you never need to reinstall the OS. It's on a read-only, secure volume, and won't boot if it's been altered. Just Erase the Contents in System Settings. That will wipe the Data volume.

If you restored everything back from your backup, then you'll be back at square one.

I would test the problem in a new user account; and also in Safe Boot Mode. Each of these will help isolate where the problem is. Also, have a look at all the Launch Agents and Daemons you've got running, from third-party software you've installed.

 

[zevrix]

is your Mac still under warranty?

 

[Sgaar]

Maybe a fresh install of Macos and then start installing SW until you see the problem reoccur.

 

[MacAsher]

I have struggled with this problem across both M1 and Intel high spec machines as soon as I try to share my screen on Zoom everything goes to hell! Sometimes my cursor is unmanageable I have experienced it with MBP 2019 i9+16GB, M1 Air + 16GB, M1 Max + 32 GB - the common factor being the screen sharing.
I also use Snagit sometimes, Logitech KB + Mouse, Wacom tablet and the behaviour may relate to drivers being present, however I dont believe its true since killing Snagit Helper, Logitech Options+, Wacom and uninstalling have not had an effect. The WindowServer uses relatively high CPU but should have lots in reserve, unless it's hogging a single processor. I have external monitors but it has occurred without them too.

Rebooting improves but doesn't eliminate the problem.

Apple have a serious defect they are not acknowledging - there is nothing on any forum that addresses this problem!!
I cant believe this isn't receiving wider attention!

 

[Amazing Iceman]

I have struggled with this problem across both M1 and Intel high spec machines as soon as I try to share my screen on Zoom everything goes to hell! Sometimes my cursor is unmanageable I have experienced it with MBP 2019 i9+16GB, M1 Air + 16GB, M1 Max + 32 GB - the common factor being the screen sharing.
I also use Snagit sometimes, Logitech KB + Mouse, Wacom tablet and the behaviour may relate to drivers being present, however I dont believe its true since killing Snagit Helper, Logitech Options+, Wacom and uninstalling have not had an effect. The WindowServer uses relatively high CPU but should have lots in reserve, unless it's hogging a single processor. I have external monitors but it has occurred without them too.

Rebooting improves but doesn't eliminate the problem.

Apple have a serious defect they are not acknowledging - there is nothing on any forum that addresses this problem!!
I cant believe this isn't receiving wider attention!

I used Zoom on a M1 Macbook Pro and also on an Intel Mac. My wife also uses it every week to do presentations on her Intel Mac.
So we have no problems sharing our desktops, iPad/iPhone over Airplay or videos to Zoom users.
Something is not right with your configuration.

By any chance, did you install any monitor utilities, such as the ones that come with LG monitors to partition your screen into multiple areas (and behave as multiple monitors)?
Or anything else that could be affecting your display?

Also, have you tried the same using another app like MS Teams or FaceTime?

 

[benwiggy]

Apple have a serious defect they are not acknowledging - there is nothing on any forum that addresses this problem!!
I cant believe this isn't receiving wider attention!

Every computer is unique. You have a combination of installed software, settings and configurations that no other computer has.
The fact that few people are posting about this problem suggests that it's quite rare.

That's good news! It means you should be able to fix it. I recommend using EtreCheck, which is great app that provides you with a report about the state of your Mac. It will list all the third-party stuff you've installed: so you can remove it and test how that affects the behaviour. It will also tell you if your disk is too full; and list processes that keep crashing.
Testing in Safe Boot mode, or in a new user account, are also things to try.

But yeah: if you've got a whole load of third-party drivers, background apps, menulets, "cleaners", and sh...stuff like that, I'd make sure it's all uninstalled, then test; then only re-install versions that are up-to-date and compatible.